A World Without Men
A WORLD WITHOUT MEN
by
Valerie Taylor
A World Without Men
By Valerie Taylor
First published in 1963.
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Published by She Winked Press,
An imprint of SRS Internet Publishing
236 West Portal Avenue, #525
San Francisco, CA 94127 USA.
For the best in lesbian pulp entertainment, visit us online at http://www.shewinked.com
ISBN: 978-1-936456-41-3
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
It was no good. She was going to be sick again. Kate looked wildly around the women's restroom trying to find something that would divert her attention from the churning inside. Long mirror above a row of basins, green couch, table with old magazines. There was no help here. The slow rise of panic inside her was familiar.
Its too soon, she thought, bending over the disinfectant-smelling bowl. Too soon. A new job ought to last at least a month—routines to learn, people to meet. Keep your mind off the emptiness until you could pay a month's rent, at least. It had never happened the first week, before.
I'm worse, she told herself dully, combing her hair. I'm never going to get better.
She took her shabby tweed coat from the hanger and pushed her arms into the sleeves. From the mirror her own face looked back at her, pale with fatigue, a carbon smudge on one cheek, eyes circled. She turned away from it and walked out through the empty office, the typewriters and billing machines covered for the night, the time clock ticking eerily in the silence.
A strong wind met her at the outside door. Cigarette butts and pieces of torn paper swirled in the gutters. I ought to go somewhere and eat a good meal, she thought vaguely, standing on the corner while the red light lasted forever. Maybe if I ate a real meal I could sleep. She tried to think of something appetizing, but her throat felt thick and the unease still lurked inside her.
She rubbed the back of a wool glove across her eyes. No wonder, she thought; those damn credit letters. Every time you shoved another stack of carbons into the machine you felt sorry for the poor bastard that owed the money. There was enough trouble in the world. Why add to it?
And how about the filing job, and the dime store job, and the time you tried doing housework? The job had nothing to do with it.
A woman pushed past her, fat, shabby, loaded down with a big sack of groceries, the veins standing out in bunches on her legs. She gave Kate a curious look. The light changed and they crossed side by side, avoiding each other's eyes. The woman's eyes were deep gray, like Paul's.
Paul, my lost brother.
Don't think about Paul. Not in public, not in the middle of the street. Wait till you're alone and other people can't see you cry. She walked faster.
But of course she knew where her feet were going. She stood in front of the cut-rate liquor store at Spruce and Fifth, the windows glittering with electric lights and bottles. The door opened and shut behind weekend shoppers, payday shoppers. Her own pay lay in her coat pocket, the bills folded as the teller had handed them to her. She touched them with her gloved hand. The paper was warm and soft.
One drink, she thought, to relax my nerves. Get everything nice and fuzzy, and maybe I can sleep. Maybe I can live through the weekend and go back to that creepy office on Monday. That would really be something. She went in.
For a moment, counting the money into the clerk's hand, she wished somebody would grab the bottle away from her and smash it. Wouldn't do any good, though. Connie had tried when she was sodden and sullen after a weekend of drinking. She could still hear the crash and see the spray of splintering glass from the edge of the sink, and remember the silence as she and Connie stood facing each other. She remembered swinging, half-blind with anger, and the feel of Connie's cheekbone under her hand. She had run out of the room then and gone to a cheap hotel, where she stayed drunk almost a week. When she came back the apartment was empty.
I wonder what she did with my clothes? Kate thought. And the twenty-dollar bill under the shelf paper, squirrelled away for a dry spell? Not that it makes any difference now.
She took the neat green-paper package and went out into the cold.
The sky was darkening when she reached the rooming house, its tall brick bulk softened by dusk. She had to live somewhere, and this was cheap. A rundown mansion made over into short-term shelter for stupid low-grade people—hillbillies, morons, drunks, misfits, failures. Illicit couples stayed there by the week, and there was an oily little man who never seemed to work: dope, maybe, or numbers. Nobody here gave a damn what you did, unless you made too much noise.
And who are you to be fussy, Kate Wood?
The downstairs hall was empty. On the table were a half a dozen pieces of mail, mostly bills and ads. Nothing for her. Who would write to her anyhow?
She plodded up two flights, holding her package carefully. The Osgood boy passed her on the landing, smiling unpleasantly. Still mad because she wouldn't let him in, and still hoping. He could drop dead.
As she stood in front of the door marked 3, fumbling in her pocket for the key, her new neighbor came running up the stairs. She was bundled into a shapeless loden coat, but her head was bare and mist glimmered in her short curls. She gave Kate a quick look. "I'm sorry, but what do you do when the key is lost? I knocked downstairs, but nobody answered."
"Landlady's out," Kate said shortly. "She sits with her grandchildren until the father gets home from work."
"Then do I have to stand in the hall until she gets home?"
The implication was clear. Kate wanted to ignore it. She wanted to get into her own room and lock the door behind her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to get the cap off that bottle and start the slow horrible descent into hell. But she said slowly, "It's drafty in the hall. You better come into my place."
"Thank you."
As the blonde walked into the room, Kate noticed the hair-thin scar across her right cheek, running from nose to chin. She had made no attempt to cover it. For some reason she couldn't understand, Kate's eyes filled with tears at the sight. She said nervously, "My room doesn't look like much."
"All cheap rooms look alike."
"I guess so." She put her package in the closet, out of sight. "Sit down. I'll make some coffee—if I can get into the bathroom for the water."
"That would be nice."
Habit's a wonderful thing, Kate thought dryly as she took the percolator from behind the screen and walked across the hall with it. You go along like you were still alive, and hardly anybody knows the difference. She didn't know whether to be irritated or relieved by this postponement of what she didn't want to do, but had to.
Her guest had taken off her coat and spread it over the back of a chair to dry, by the time she got back. She stood in front of the old-fashioned dresser, combing her hair. She looked older than at first glance, in her late twenties; a slim boyish figure in a dark skirt and tailored blouse. At least, Kate thought, I don't have to listen to a yacking teenager.
"I'm making myself at home in your house, but I don't know your name yet."
"Kate Wood."
"I'm Erika Frohmann."
"That's pretty."
Erika shrugged. "It's a name."
Kate took the coffeepot into the kitchen alcove and turned on the electric plate. The coils glowed ashy pink and then orange. She came out and sat on the bed. "It takes a while."
"This is a sad house, isn't it?" Erika smoothed back the last curly strands from a rounded forehead. "It must have been a proud house once. My grandmother's house had these high ceilings with the plaster cupids in the corners, and the downstairs floors were parquet—like the hall here. On the landing was a naked woman with a torch, and the torch was a gas lamp." She laughed, but her face was tender. "She thought it was beautiful. But this house is sad."
"Any place where people live without roots is sad."
"Mine were torn up a long time ago," Erika volunteered. "Everyone is tired of refugee stories. There are so many and they're all alike. May I help you with the coffee, or anything?"
"No thanks."
Erika Frohmann said dryly, "I should have stayed in the hall. You like to be alone, don't you?"
Kate hesitated between truth and politeness. "Sometimes."
"I'll go soon."
"It's all right."
Erika had slipped off her shabby loafers, and sat with her legs curled under her. Her slim body fitted into the awkward chair as though she had no bones. "You don't feel like talking, so we won't talk."
Kate's eyes filled. Damn! she thought. She turned her back on the other girl. "I think the coffee is done," she said.
"I take mine black." A smile crinkled Erika's face. "When I came to this country I put sugar in everything. Butter too. On my bread, an inch thick. It was funny." The smile vanished. "I was hungry so long, all the time I was growing up. Even my bones were hungry."
"Where was that?"
"In Austria. With my family until the Anschluss, then in a kind of a camp. Not Dachau or any of those, quite an ordinary camp. There were a lot of them. But the people who died in them were just as dead as the others. I was twelve." She caught Kate's surprised look. "Yes, I'm now twenty-nine. Quite old."
"Five years older than me."
"That was the first part of my life. Now I live next door to you—since yesterday. Five days a week I teach music in a high school, to children who prefer rock and roll. On Sundays I go riding, when I can afford to rent a horse."
She took the cup from Kate and sat drinking her coffee, slowly, as if she were thirsty. Kate was silent. Finished, Erika set the cup on the dresser and stood up. "Thank you, Kate Wood. You must come and see me. But not until you want to."
"It was nice having you."
"No, because you wanted to be alone. But sometimes," Erika said, slipping her feet into her shoes and picking up her coat, "it's better not to be so alone. Now I must see if the lady is home yet."
Her steps were light and quick on the stairs. Kate stood in the middle of the floor, listening, until she tapped on Mrs. Brownlee's door below.
An interesting girl. Think about her. Put off the thoughts that would unwind from the spool of memory, hour after bitter hour, before the black nothing was reached. A little frightening. As if she could look at you and guess everything you're trying to hide: the aloneness and the terror.
She unwrapped the bottle and stood it on the dresser, between a tarnished lipstick and her plastic comb, which still had a few blond hairs caught between its teeth. The glass winked in the overhead light. She hated it.
She wadded the paper and gummed tape into a tight ball and dropped them into the wastebasket, then smoothed the wrinkles out of the bedspread. Can't stand to have things messy, she thought, looking nervously around the room. I may be a bum but I'm not a slob, not yet.
She poured a little of the whiskey into a plastic tumbler and tasted it. It was warm and acrid. Wish I had an ice cube, she thought. She made herself swallow a little, fixing her mind on the warmth and relaxation that would follow.
The second sip was easier. Her throat loosened and the little muscle at the side of her neck quit jumping. She sat down on the edge of the bed and put the bottle on the floor, in easy reach.
Erika Frohmann’s light steps passed the door. Kate got up, frowning, and turned her own key in the lock. Then she came back to bed and poured another drink.
CHAPTER 2
The world is full of unhappy people. Kate's throat ached to think of them. People who lie in bed at night, fretting about their bills and adding up the hopeless totals. Wives and husbands cheating on each other, meeting at the supper table with their hearts full of guilt. People screaming in hospital beds. People who can't love because their hearts are dried up like last year's seedpods—all the empty women in rented rooms with their hearts running over with love, and nobody to give it to. There are the insane in their own fantasy world, shut away from what they can't endure. And the damned in prison, the hurters of others who can never wash the blood off their hands or wipe from their tormented minds the knowledge of what they have done.
Paul, my lost brother.
Don't think about Paul. Think about what you're going to do. Another employment agency? Another job? Another total failure?
Anxiety neurosis. Dr. Liebermann had explained it to her, leaning over his cluttered desk, dropping cigar ashes down his vest. You cannot accept responsibility. But my good girl, this is an illness like any other, with recognizable symptoms. It can be , cured. We start the cure by finding out what you are hiding from yourself.
She owed Dr. Liebermann a hundred and forty dollars. Also an apology, she admitted grudgingly. Going up to his office the last time, with her stomach in a hard knot the way it always was before an analytic hour, the thought had come: but you don't have to go on with this nonsense. And she had stepped out of the elevator at the floor below his and taken the next one down. As simple as that.
Oh, very simple. She could see herself going up to an office manager and explaining. I can't work any more because I'm nuts. Oh, great.
She would never go to sleep. And if she did, the nightmares would come back.
Do you sleep, Paul? Do you still have bad dreams the way you used to when we were little, and you'd get in my bed and cuddle up close because the black stallion was chasing you and you couldn't run? Your feet are fastened to the ground now, sure enough. The black stallion has caught up with you now. And who comes to comfort you when you scream out in your sleep?
Kate stood up, stiffly. She looked around the room. The empty coffee cups that she and Erika Frohmann had used stood on the dresser. She carried them across the hall to the bathroom. But the door was locked and there was the sound of water running and the smell of cheap bath salts. Some day I'll have a bathroom of my own, she thought. And smiled, not pleasantly. There wasn't going to be any some day.